The Journey Home: My Life in Pinstripes

By Jorge Posada and Gary Brozek

The legendary New York Yankee catcher tells the incredible story of his personal journey, offering an unexpected, behind-the-plate view of his career, his past, and the father-son bond that fueled his love of the game.

For seventeen seasons, the name Jorge Posada was synonymous with New York Yankees baseball. A fixture behind home plate throughout the Yankees biggest successes, Jorge became the Yankees' star catcher almost immediately upon his arrival, and in the years that followed, his accomplishments, work ethic, and leadership established him as one of the greatest Yankees ever to put on the uniform.

Now, in this long-awaited memoir, Jorge Posada details his journey to home plate, sharing a remarkable, generational account of his journey from the ball fields of Puerto Rico to the House that Ruth built. Offering a view from behind the mask unlike any other, Jorge discusses the key moments and plays that shaped teams and forged a legacy that came to define Yankee baseball for a generation. With pitch-by-pitch recall, Jorge looks back across the years, explaining how—as part of the Core Four alongside Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera—he helped to reestablish the Yankees as a dynasty and win five World Series.

Going beyond his all-star career, Jorge also shares his life in full for the first time, examining how his remarkable journey to the big leagues began in the most unexpected of ways. Digging into his cultural roots in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba, Jorge illuminates three generations of cherished father-son relationships that have made him the man he is today. At the center is the deep bond he shares with his father and namesake, Jorge Sr, who escaped Cuba and would eventually mold his son to be a ball player, honing his talent and instilling in him the drive necessary to fulfill his childhood dream of playing in the Bronx.

Complete with sixteen pages of color photographs, this touching and earnest memoir is a testament to hard work and a celebration of the generational gift of baseball between fathers and sons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9780062379641

Jorge Posada

Jorge Posada made his major league debut in 1995. He was a five-time All-Star and won five Silver Slugger Awards and five World Series with the New York Yankees. He retired at the end of the 2011 season, and now works as a guest instructor at the Yankees’ spring training camp. Jorge and his wife, Laura Posada, have two children, Jorge Luis and Paulina, and live in Florida.

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PROLOGUE

The Pile

In 2009, a few days after we’d won the World Series, I was out with my family enjoying a celebratory dinner. We were heading home to South Florida in a few days, and it felt good to have the season over and to be enjoying a warm late fall evening. After we finished, Laura and I sat while Jorge Jr. and Paulina spooned up some ice cream. I saw the look of mischief in my daughter’s eyes, shook my head, and whispered, Don’t even think about it. She went back to using her spoon as she was supposed to, instead of as a launcher.

When we stood to leave the restaurant, a man came up to me, his Yankees hat in his hand. I appreciated that he’d waited for us to finish before approaching.

Jorge, excuse me, but I was hoping you could . . .

He held out the hat and a silver marker.

Of course. I took the hat and signed it.

I’m a huge fan, he said, nodding over to where his family sat. My wife did a great thing for me this year. I don’t know how she did it, but she got us seats for our anniversary. Section 20. Right behind the plate. Best seats in the house. I could see everything, just like you.

It must be great back there, I said and handed back his hat.

The whole field is spread out in front of us. Amazing. Thank you and congratulations.

He was right that it’s amazing to have nearly every part of a baseball game play out in front of you—the view from that part of the stadium is remarkable—but he got one thing wrong: I had the best seat in the house, on that night and every night I sat behind home plate. If he thought that those seats in the Legends section of the new Yankee Stadium made him feel like he was a part of the action, imagine what it was like for me to squat behind the plate and participate in every pitch.

I always wanted to play in the big leagues. It was a desire that my father planted and nurtured in me from a young age. Planted and nurtured may not be the best expression because it might make you think of someone working in a pretty garden raising flowers. What I went through, starting as a small child, was more like a farmer rising very early every day and working his butt off in the heat, the sun, and the rain and enduring whatever else Mother Nature threw at him.

When I think of my career with the Yankees and remember those games from behind the plate, I see Mariano’s cutter splintering another bat, Derek cruising into the hole, Bernie stalking a fly ball into the gap, Clemens scowling over the top of his glove, Andy smiling as another double-play ball wraps up an inning, the dog-pile near the mound as we celebrate another World Series win. What may not make sense is that there are many times when those images get edged out by visions of another kind of pile.

In 1983, I was 12 years old. I woke up one summer morning to a whining sound and regular beeps coming from in front of our house in Santurce, Puerto Rico. I looked out the window and watched as a dump truck backed up our driveway. Seconds later, its bed rose in the air and an avalanche of dirt, the color of terra-cotta tile, puked onto our driveway. I felt each clod hit me in the pit of my stomach. This was not good.

I quickly got dressed and went into the kitchen. My mother, Tamara, was busy at the stove, and the sound of something sizzling made it hard for her to hear my whispered question: "¿Que pasó? ¿Donde está Papí?"

Almost on cue, my father came in. He tucked a paper into the pocket of his guayabera shirt and then nodded his head toward the door that led from the kitchen to the backyard.

"¿Lo ves?" He held his arm out to indicate our backyard, an expanse of scrub grass that ran downhill from the house.

"Sí," I said, wondering why he was asking me if I saw what was obvious.

Without another word, he led me around the side of the house to the driveway. Again we stopped and he pointed: "¿Lo ves?"

I looked at the pile of dirt that rose above the level of our single-story home’s roof.

I felt my heart drop.

"Sí. Lo veo." Something told me that I wasn’t just out with my father to test my vision.

He went on: "Tienes que mover la tierra para la parte de atrás de la casa. He pointed at the pile and then moved his head, indicating the backyard. Para nivelar el terreno." He ran his hand parallel to the ground to indicate what my task was.

"Tienes dos meses." He held up two fingers, and I understood that I would be hauling dirt from the driveway to the backyard for essentially most of my summer vacation.

"El trabajo será bueno para usted." My father flexed his biceps and nodded at me.

I stood there shaking inside, thinking that this was some kind of punishment and not work. I didn’t dare to indicate my displeasure, my disbelief, my feeling that, if I could, I would use that dirt to bury this man, not to level off our backyard. My father walked around the pile and disappeared for a moment. I took the opportunity to shake my head in disgust. What was I going to tell my friends when they wanted me to go to the beach with them? Or to the club? Or even just to ride our bikes?

My father came back, pushing a wheelbarrow. In it lay a shovel. I started grabbing handfuls of the dirt. Surprised by how cool and slick the dirt was, I dropped each handful into the wheelbarrow. Nearly as much stuck to my hands as landed in the wheelbarrow. I took a quick glance at my father, who stood there with a how could this boy be so dumb? expression on his face. I grabbed the tool and jabbed it into the ooze. It resisted my efforts. I dug in again. I hoisted the full shovel and felt it strain against the muscles of my arms and shoulders. I lifted it over my head and shook it, seeing the few clods tumble into the wheelbarrow.

My father went back into the house. I shut my eyes and brought my hands to my face to press them against my eyes and shut out the frustration and anger welling inside me. I’d show him. I’d get this job done in no time. I wouldn’t let him take my summer of fun away from me.

For the next two weeks, I went after that dirt pile with a vengeance. With the exception of breaks for lunch and dinner, I dug into that pile hour after hour, both cursing and being grateful for the daily rains. The rain washed away some of the dirt in a red bloodstream down our driveway. After the rain, the sun baked that pile into a hardened mass, a kind of upside-down clay pot that I had to hammer at.

At 12, I was a skinny kid with spindly arms and legs, built like a spider with a not very substantial torso. Initially, I thought that wheeling the dirt would be the fun part. It wasn’t. Gravity was a fierce opponent. The handle of both the shovel and the wheelbarrow tore at my skin.

Even though I got used to the routine of the work, at that time—and for a long time after—I didn’t appreciate my father giving me that task, let alone understand why he made me take it on. On my worst days, I’d return to the house vowing that I would never touch that pile of dirt again—I didn’t care what my father did to me.

As always, my mother was there for me. She treated and dressed my wounds. She assured me that I’d be okay. At night, after I’d gone to bed, I heard her take up my case for me.

He’s a boy. This is so hard.

Leave it alone. I know what I’m doing.

Like me, my mother knew it was best to drop it. Just like that earth that solidified in the driveway, over time my father would become an even more solidified and unmovable object. His stubbornness was legendary.

In the end, I finished the task in a few weeks instead of all summer. (My stubbornness was like my father’s.) I’d like to tell you that I celebrated and felt a great sense of accomplishment, but all I felt back then was relief that the ordeal was over and regret that it had been a waste of my time. I wanted to be with my friends and forget the whole thing had ever happened.

Now as I sit here, 31 years later, a tear comes to my eye as I think of those days. The tears come from a mixture of anger and gratitude. I understand better what my father was teaching me, because it was in that backyard and other places around Puerto Rico that my dreams took hold. I recognize now that the summer of ’83 was just part of my education as a man and as a ballplayer.

In time, my hands stopped hurting and my grip—on any handle but also on what life is really like—got stronger. During my 17 years in the big leagues, I never wore a batting glove—after that summer spent with a wooden shovel in my hands, I didn’t want anything to come between the feeling of that wooden bat and me. Over the course of that summer, wheeling the dirt became easier. I developed strength in my arms, shoulders, and back; my balance improved; and my legs got stronger. I was just starting the transition from spindly little kid to young man. More than that, I used my stubbornness and my passion in a positive way to get something done.

My reward for my hard work? The morning after I finished, I saw on the back patio a stack of paint cans, brushes, scrapers, and sheets of sandpaper. I shut my eyes and waited, knowing that my father would join me in a few moments to tell me what was next.

From the day I was born and throughout my adult life, my father wanted me to be a ballplayer. I was enrolled in a very special kind of school run by my father, Jorge Luis de Posada, a Cuban refugee who endured more than I ever knew or experienced as a kid. Because of the lessons he taught me—about the game, about how to approach life—I had the foundation I needed to succeed in attaining that goal. I learned those lessons early and then applied them as a way to get to the top of my profession.

I am incredibly privileged to have played for the New York Yankees at a time when we enjoyed so much success. I was fortunate to come to a city that I came to think of as my home away from home and to play in front of the most passionate, knowledgeable, and loyal fans in the country. Living and playing in New York let me experience some incredible moments off the field—the highs of riding down the Canyon of Heroes in a shower of ticker tape, as well as the lows of being present when the country I’d come to love was attacked.

But I was also lucky to have a father who cared so passionately about my success and about me. He knew a lot about the game of baseball: he played it in his youth and young adulthood in Cuba and served as a major league scout. Baseball was in my blood and in my house. It still is, and I feel privileged to work with my son, Jorge Jr., as he refines his skills.

I also recognize this: I wouldn’t have enjoyed the life I’ve lived as a Yankee and as a man if it weren’t for my mother and father. That pile of dirt and clay was a lot like me—it took both my parents to get it moving, to make it useful, and to transform it. That’s what my mother and father—and later other men like Joe Torre—did for me. My father especially taught me this: life seldom presents you with a level playing field. If you work hard enough, believe in yourself enough, and have enough passion and stubbornness, you can level that field yourself.

In the pages that follow, I’m going to take you back with me, giving you the best seat in the house so that you can see the world from behind the mask. I had a great view of an amazing era in Yankees history. It could have been greater, and that’s part of the story as well. It’s no secret that I hated to lose. My dad taught me that, but he added this: if you hate it so much do everything you can so you don’t. I feel like we’re losing time; let’s play ball.

CHAPTER ONE

Bad Boys

I don’t think that anybody is born to play a certain position, but I do know this: when I came into this world on August 17, 1970, there was at least one person who believed that I should be a ballplayer. That was my father. He was so excited to have a son, and he told my mom, Tamara, that he was going to make me into a ballplayer. I’m sure that lots of fathers have big dreams for their children and they all want them to succeed. I’m not sure that all of them have a plan in mind, though, or are willing to take the steps my dad did to ensure that their vision becomes a reality. Mine was.

As I kid, I wondered how I could live out such a big dream when I was one of the smallest in my grade. I also wondered how I could ever be as accomplished an athlete as my father was. My father didn’t brag, but we had two large albums filled with yellowing pages of newsprint that showed all the things my father had done as an athlete while living in Cuba. One was for before and the other after. The big event in the middle that helped define those two words was Castro’s take-over of the nation that my father’s family had loved and enjoyed living in for generations. My paternal grandfather had worked in sales for a pharmaceutical company. He drove himself hard to make a good life for his wife, son, and three daughters. He was not around much because of his devotion to his job, but my father learned from his example. No one is going to hand you anything in this life; if you get ahead it is because you wanted to be proud of yourself and what you were able to do for your family. My grandfather was a good track athlete in his day, running 5,000- and 10,000-meter races where endurance mattered as much as speed.

In looking at the before scrapbook, I didn’t fully understand that sometimes circumstances could occur to take things away from you. What I saw was an account of my father setting a national record in the breaststroke, leading his team to a win in basketball, and making a name for himself in baseball to the point that a Philadelphia A’s scout who came to see another player noticed my father’s hustle and talent and offered him a contract. For a long time, I didn’t understand why it was that my father signed that contract but never got to play. I didn’t think too much about what that said about him. I was mostly interested in charting my father’s physical development. I was always the smallest in my grade, a skinny kid with thin limbs. My dad had looked the same way in the early photographs of him as a swimmer, but over the years he became taller and broader and I hoped that I would take after him. I also hoped that one day I’d be able to fill two scrapbooks with my achievements.

Well before I could read and think at all about my dad’s past and how he was influencing my present and my future, I was already in love with baseball.

I just loved swinging a bat and watching the ball fly off it in the Puerto Rican sky. I was spending time with my dad, and that was a good thing. Eventually I’d make friends in the neighborhood and also learn to toss the ball to myself and hit mini-versions of fungoes, but almost all of my earliest memories of my dad revolve around either playing or watching baseball together.

My dad wasn’t big about telling me why he had me do some of the things he did. He was more like that quiet guy in the clubhouse who chooses to lead by example. I knew that my dad worked hard, doing a bunch of different jobs to make a living for us. We lived in a nice house, my dad drove a car, and he left every day early in the morning, came home around dinnertime, and frequently went out again. During the days, my father worked for Richardson-Vicks, a pharmaceutical company, and later for Procter & Gamble. He also coached baseball and basketball, played softball a couple nights a week, and seemed to be in constant motion. Along with his regular job, he sold cigars and baseball gloves to make more money. A few times he made brief mentions of how he had once gone without food, but I never experienced anything like that. Christmas was always a big deal and I can still picture my first bike—a Tyler bike—and my Ford Mustang pedal car. Our car always smelled of leather and cigars—not from armchairs or upholstery but from baseball gloves. To this day, if I could, I wouldn’t mind having the scent of baseball gloves piped into my house. I can still remember sitting there with some of those gloves, trying to figure out what those letters meant. H-E-A-R-T-O-F-T-H-E-H-I-D-E and E-D-U-C-A-T-E-D-H-E-E-L were my first spelling lessons in English.

Sometimes my dad would take me with him on those after-work sales calls, and I’d sit there watching the palm trees and the hills pass by as we drove around. I’d sit in the car sometimes and watch him hustle away, gloves and boxes of cigars tucked under his arm, him looking like a running back busting through a hole in the line. He wasn’t a big guy—five feet nine inches—but very muscular.

My mom was always home with me; in fact, she didn’t learn to drive a car until I was in my midteens. Eventually my sister, Michelle, came along, four years later, in 1974. About the time she was born my dad was doing some part-time scouting for the Houston Astros, then later on for the Yankees, and then the Blue Jays. He’d be away on those trips, but never for very long. When I think of those days now, it was like I lived in two different houses. The one I spent time in with my mom and sister had a lot of light and air and laughter in it. In a way, it was like a classroom when the teacher isn’t present. When Dad came home, it wasn’t like everything got dark and suffocating, but we all came to attention, sat up straighter, and wiped those goofy smiles off our faces. My dad commanded respect, and over time I’d learn to fear him as well.

If I associate my father with the odors of leather and tobacco, my mom reminds me of the mouthwatering cooking smells of arroz con frijoles negros, carne, and platanitos. My dad worked hard to provide for us, and my mom worked hard to keep us well fed and neatly clothed. She was from the Dominican Republic, and she had brought her favorite recipes with her. The best things she brought with her were her parents, my grandmother Lupe and my grandfather Rafael. To give you an idea how close I was to them and how different my relationship with them was, I called him Papí Fello and her Mamí Upe.

I spent a lot of time with them both, until Papí Fello died when I was eight. Mamí Upe remained a big part of my life well into my adulthood. I loved that woman so much. Every summer when I was growing up we would travel to Dominicana—Santo Domingo, to be precise—to spend time with the two of them. Also, before and after Papí Fello died, Mamí Upe would come to Puerto Rico to spend a few weeks and sometimes a couple of months with us.

Latin Americans have a reputation for being passionate and sometimes loud people who talk over one another and break into song and start dancing at any moment. That was Mamí Upe, a walking, talking, clothes-making, cooking Carnaval Ponceño of a grandmother. She came in and made life fun for us, and when she left, the Lent of the rest of our lives returned and we gave up a lot of our festive nature until her return. She told us great stories about her life and the rest of the Villeta family, including my aunts Madrinita, Leda, Mili, Nora (whom I called Nona), and my mom. I especially loved the stories she’d tell about going to the National Parade in Santo Domingo, the oldest carnival celebration in the Americas. Her eyes would light up when she told us about the Diablos Cojuelos—people dressed in elaborate costumes that suggested the Devil and his helpers.

She’d sit there sipping her rum and milk, her high-pitched voice rising and falling as she described being chased along the Malecón (the waterfront) by these devilish characters with their huge teeth and gaping mouths. She’d take a big gulp of her drink and sit there laughing, her shoulders heaving, and she’d pat her leg and I would climb into her lap, the sweet and sharp smell of alcohol and milk and the sound of her wheezing breath forming a pleasant cloud around my head. She’d tuck me in at night, making sure that I said my prayers. I can still picture her stopping at the doorway after the lights were off. I waited for her to mouth the words "Te amo" before I’d shut my eyes.

She always told me how handsome I was, and that was good to hear since at school I was teased constantly with the nickname Dumbo because of my protruding ears. If life with my father on his return to the house was like a classroom falling silent when a teacher enters the room, then life when Mamí Upe left was a necessary but no fun post-party cleanup. Then, a few days or even weeks later, you’d come across something you hadn’t picked up and you’d smile, thinking of how great that night was.

Like my dad, she was tough. My mom didn’t drive, so we only had the one car. To get groceries I’d take my bike with a basket attached to the handlebars several times a week and sometimes several times a day. But when Mamí Upe was there, we’d all walk to the grocery store sometimes as much as three times a day. Kid miles are different from real miles, but it didn’t seem like it was that long of a trip. I remember Mamí Upe and me, both at home and in the DR, walking along together, her with bunches of groceries under her arms and one hand on my shoulder, steadying me and making sure I didn’t wobble into traffic.

Those trips to Santo Domingo weren’t quite as much fun for me. I enjoyed being with her, but my cousins were all girls, so my baseball obsession had to be put on hold. Not entirely though. I’d listen to games on the radio with Papí Fello. He was a huge baseball fan, so when he was still alive things were better on that front. He told me that I was lucky that my father was Cuban—after all, the Cuban exiles who fled the Ten Years’ War that lasted from 1868 to 1878 had brought the game with them to the DR. He was a big fan of one of the four original professional teams that made up the Dominican league, Los Tigres del Licey. They were kind of like the Yankees of their day (the 1920s) and were so dominant that the owners of the three other teams in the league decided that to make things more competitive they’d create another team formed with their best players. That team was Los Leones del Escogido.

Tigers and Lions were great names for those teams, but when I heard more about another dictator and his role in baseball, it was like my mind shut down. I knew that Rafael Leónidas Trujillo was someone important, but I wasn’t all that interested in my grandfather’s history lessons about Caribbean baseball. I loved the game, but the politics of it just didn’t matter to me then. Later on, I’d appreciate a bit more the history of baseball in my region. But my young mind was on baseball played on a continent not too far from where I lived.

When I was back in Puerto Rico with my two best friends, Manuel, who lived across the street from me, and Ernesto, who lived next door, we played baseball with a plastic ball and a stick every chance we got. I don’t think I understood this at the time, but I was fortunate that Ernesto was two years older and Manuel one year older than me. I could hold my own against them, and playing against kids who were more physically mature helped me. It also established a pattern that stayed in place for nearly my entire baseball career. No matter the team I played on, no matter the league, I was never the superstar, the stud, the phenom that a lot of big league players were. Along with what my father was teaching me about hard work, I realized that because I wasn’t as gifted as everybody else, I had to work hard, but also that my passion for the game could help me overcome some of my deficiencies.

I was kind of a skinny version of a bobble-head doll with a tiny body and an oversized head. I’d eventually catch up to everyone else physically, but it wouldn’t be until late in my high school days.

When I was in the backyard with Ernesto and Manuel, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I was just thinking that I was lucky to be able to scrounge up the materials to make baselines in the grass with house paint, install a home plate, a pitching rubber, and bases I borrowed from my dad.

We had some unusual ground rules in my home park. A ball hit onto the roof of the house was an out because the ball would get stuck on the flat roof and we’d have to suspend the action for a bit while someone climbed up there to get it. We had some iron grates that ran around the house; hitting the ball over the grate was a home run, hitting it on a fly was a double, and bouncing one off it was a single. Talk about having to have good bat control. A homer required just enough power, but not too much.

I liked pitching just enough as well. There were instructions on the box about how to hold the Wiffle ball in your hand to get it to move certain ways, but mastering the art of the Wiffle ball didn’t interest me. I didn’t get nearly the same sense of satisfaction when I heard the sound of a bat slicing through air when no contact was made as I did when I heard the sharp plastic thwack of a well-struck ball. That didn’t mean that I never tossed a ball around. I did that constantly, even in the house, lying in my bed and tossing a baseball off the ceiling and letting it plop into my glove. That thumping sound was always followed by my mother’s voice, Ay, Jorge. Leave the ball alone. My mother supported my baseball habit as much as my dad did, but they each had different limits. My mom was okay with me getting off the bus and dashing into the house, tossing my books down, and going out to play. She just didn’t want to have to hear that constant thumping and have to clean up the ball marks on the ceiling.

Even then, I saw a big difference between throwing something and pitching a baseball. If I didn’t love pitching, I did love throwing a ball or just about anything. I could spend hours in the backyard tossing rocks at various targets. As I got older I enjoyed games of burnout with my teammates and friends. The object is to throw the ball as hard as you can so that you hurt the hand of the guy you’re playing against. As you get older and more accurate, you add the element of hitting the target your opponent holds. If he has to move the glove to catch the ball, you don’t earn any points. I could also make myself dizzy-sick by tossing pop-ups into the air and running to catch them.

Sometimes people not directly involved in our games became my opponent. Because of the way my field was set on our property, we had our own version of a quirky Green Monster—hitting one over this fence resulted in an out because it was the worst possible outcome: the fence bordered the home of a cranky guy who didn’t want anybody in his yard. He was unpredictable. Sometimes he’d be cool and he’d toss the ball back to us. Other times he’d toss the ball onto the roof of his house and stand there with his hands on his hips, daring us to come over onto his property.

Once, when I was about eight or nine, Mamí Upe was visiting and I was out in Jorge Posada Jr. Stadium playing with my two buddies. I threw a nasty rising fastball in on Manuel’s hands, and he fouled it back. I sank to my knees as the ball landed in Mr. Mad Man’s yard. We called out to him, and he slid his patio door open and rubbed the palms of his hands in his eyes. His dog, a standard poodle that was nearly as tall as me but very friendly, trotted alongside my neighbor as we walked over to where our Wiffle ball lay. Without saying anything to us, he picked up the ball and handed it to his dog. In a few seconds that perfectly round ball was a flattened disk of slobber and plastic.

I couldn’t believe it. We all stood there muttering "Dios mío" and a lot worse under our breath. Mr. Mad Man walked back inside his house and shut the door. We had a couple of other balls, but they were scuffed up and one was held together with electrical tape. In my mind, I could hear my dad saying something about how balls don’t grow on trees. We played a couple more innings, then Ernesto and Manuel had to go home for lunch. Because of my dad’s work schedule, especially in the summer, we ate lunch kind of late—at two o’clock precisely. I had an hour or so to kill, and without baseball or school to occupy my mind, some not so good thoughts crept in.

I crept into the house, careful not to alert my mom or Mamí Upe to my presence. I went to my room and tucked my BB gun under my shirt and snuck back outside. The midday air was thick with clouds gathering for a storm. I did the Marine crawl to the back fence, and without really giving it much thought, opened fire on Mr. Mad Man’s patio door. I heard a few high-pitched plinks and then crawled back toward the house. Once I got inside the house, Mamí Upe stood there. When she saw my gun, she first shut her eyes and then raised them toward the ceiling.

I know you did something, Jorge, she said. I can see it in your face.

I shrugged my shoulders. She knew that I wasn’t allowed to use the gun unless my dad was around. My body was vibrating with guilt and adrenaline. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I didn’t know how Mamí Upe would have responded, let alone my dad, if she knew what I’d done, and I didn’t want to find out. I’d never done anything like that before. I’d been disobedient, but never that destructive or that vengeful. It was as if the Mad Man’s spite had infected me, and the whole two wrongs don’t make a right lesson was ringing in my ears and in my mind as images of me pulling that trigger got my tears starting. I wanted to undo those past few minutes, but I couldn’t.

Then my mom came into the kitchen.

Mamí Upe rolled her eyes and pointed at my gun and said, "¡Mira! ¡Lo que el diablo te ha hecho hacer!"

I told her that the Devil hadn’t made me do anything. But seeing the look on her face made me feel sick to my stomach. I’d disappointed her, and that hurt more than anything else.

The two women shook their heads and looked at the clock. It was five minutes to two, and my father was due home any second. He was very strict about our two o’clock lunchtime. If you weren’t there at exactly two, you didn’t get to eat. I was there on time, but I had been told that I could not use the gun unless he was around. If only my mom and my grandmother had known what I had really been up to.

Hurry now, Mamí Upe said to me. Go into your room. Close the door and pray. Ask Jesus to calm your father. Make him calm, please. Say this again and again.

I did as she asked, until my heart skipped a beat when I heard my father’s car in the driveway. I hustled back into the kitchen and sat at the table. Michelle was already there, and my father kissed her forehead as he passed her before taking his seat.

I sat there, silently praying again, asking God to keep those two women quiet. We all sat there in silence, listening to the thunder and the huge drops of rain spattering outside. Lightning flashed and the lights flickered. My father frowned and said, This will pass quickly. He then pointed at me and said, When I get home later, we have some work to do.

I nodded and gulped a bit of rice and beans past my tense throat, a tear coming to my eye.

Yes, I said. I know. I’ll be ready.

After my father finished and left, we were all still at the table. I was about to thank the two of them. My mother held up her hand. Don’t thank us. Just be better.

May I be excused? I asked.

Mamí Upe held out her arms to me and I walked into her hug.

Be a good boy, she said.

In addition to all his other jobs, my father worked for years as a baseball scout; in 1983 he began to do that work full-time for the Toronto Blue Jays. I quickly came to know their lineup by heart. The 1983 Blue Jays had some names familiar to most fans—Dámaso García, Alfredo Griffin, Jesse Barfield, and Cliff Johnson. But there were some less familiar guys as well, like Rance Mulliniks, Ernie Whitt, and others whose names—Garth Iorg, Mickey Klutts—just stick in your mind.

To be honest, I followed major league baseball in general, not one particular team. That was one advantage of following baseball from Puerto Rico: because none of the teams were based there, I didn’t feel a need to be a fan of any one team. I didn’t inherit any fan history from my family, so I was kind of a free agent. I guess in a way I was like the Yankees of the 1980s, always looking to acquire a guy for my mental team (I can’t say fantasy team because of what that has come to mean) that I liked. I loved Don Mattingly and Dave Winfield—they were two of my favorite players. But when it came time to step up to the plate in my backyard, the guy I always wanted to be was George Brett. During my elementary school years, the Kansas City Royals were at the middle and then nearing the end of a run that had begun in 1976 and included two World Series appearances. After that, they wouldn’t get into the playoffs from 1986 until 2014. George Brett was the leader of that earlier team, and a hitter I really admired.

What I thought was cool about Brett was his approach at the plate. He would settle into the box, rock back on his heels, arch his back so his head was behind his butt, and then bounce out like a guy getting out of bed. I’d watch him hit and think that he was going to fall asleep before the pitcher delivered the ball.

But the guy I really loved to imitate and watch was Don Mattingly. It seemed like he used a different stance every game. Every time one of his games came on TV, I’d watch it and wonder what he was going to do that day. Was he going to turn his left foot (his back foot) sideways? How many degrees was he going to twist it? And it wasn’t just from game to game that he’d do something different—during the course of a

Reviews for The Journey Home

[nmele_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I used to enjoy these memoirs but, like Mariano Rivera's, this one did little for me. Maybe it's because Posada is one of those what you see is what you get guys. Maybe it's because his story is one of talent perfected through hard work, and maybe it's because he was never a very public fellow or a character. For Yankee diehards only, I'd say after reading it.